While the US and China have been the biggest recipients of [agtech] investment, Australia is quietly becoming an ag-tech hotbed.

Some of the innovations being trialled in the country — from platforms that track emissions data at farm level to experimental fungal spores that replenish exhausted soil — are not simply changing the way local farmers operate, but also attracting attention from international investors.

A pragmatic, outback-hardened approach to research and development means that there is a culture of risk-taking among Australian farmers. According to a survey by research company Kynetech, its farmers are the world’s second-biggest adopters of technology after the US.

In order to expand further, Australian ag-tech — like the country’s agricultural industry, which exports 75 per cent of its produce — needs to head overseas, says David Lord, a manager at AgriFutures Australia, the federal government’s research and development fund. “We have to look to a global market,” he says. “If we do that, we have a much higher chance of capturing that value.”

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